Claiming the Canada Carbon Rebate (October 2024)
Residents of the eight Canadian provinces in which the federal fuel charge (more commonly known as the federal carbon tax) is levied are entitled to claim and receive the federal Canada Carbon Rebate ...
When are legal fees deductible? (August 2024)
In most cases, the need to seek out and obtain legal services (and to pay for them) is associated with life’s more unwelcome occurrences and experiences – a divorce, a dispute over a family estate...
Dealing with the OAS clawback (May 2024)
Most retired Canadians receive income from two government-sponsored retirement income programs – the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and the Old Age Security (OAS) program. While benefits from both are pa...
Disputing your Notice of Assessment (May 2024)
This year, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will receive and process more than 30 million individual income tax returns for the 2023 tax year. No two of those returns will be identical, as each such re...
More help for first time home buyers (May 2024)
As everyone knows, buying one’s first home – achieving that elusive first step on to the “property ladder” – has always presented a challenge, and that challenge has rarely been greater than...
What’s new on the tax return for 2023? (March 2024)
While our tax laws require Canadian residents to complete and file a T1 tax return form each spring, that return form is never exactly the same from year to year. Some of the changes found in each yea...
Claiming a deduction for moving costs (June 2023)
Sales of residential real estate across Canada are, after a slowdown in 2022, once again on the rise. Back-to-back increases in sales figures during February and March 2023 were followed by a double d...
Creating cash flow from home equity (July 2022)
If Canadians have the feeling that they are being squeezed from all sides when it comes to household finances, it’s because they are. In 2022 Canadian consumers have been hit by a double whammy of t...
Disputing your Notice of Assessment (June 2022)
Of the 27 million individual income tax returns already filed with the Canada Revenue Agency for the 2021 tax year, no two were identical. Each return contained its own particular combination of types...
How to not fall victim to a tax scam (April 2022)
It is a sad fact that, every year, thousands of Canadians become the victims of scams in which fraud artists claim to be representatives of the federal government. Equally sadly, in most cases the mon...
How to pay your taxes for 2021 (April 2022)
Our tax system is complex and, understandably, its myriad rules and exceptions are a mystery to most Canadian taxpayers – and most are happy to leave it that way. There is however, one rule in the C...
Claiming medical expenses for 2021 (March 2022)
The Canadian tax system provides individual taxpayers with a tax credit for out-of-pocket medical and para-medical expenses incurred during the year. Given that such expenses must be incurred at some ...
What’s new on the return for 2021? (March 2022)
While the requirement that Canadians file an income tax return each year never changes, the actual content of that return is never the same year to year. While many of the changes — like inflation-r...